Wałęsa was born in Popowo, Poland.[3] His father, Bolesław, was a carpenter who was arrested by the Nazis before Lech was born and interned in a concentration camp at Mlyniec. Boleslaw returned home after the war but lived only two months before succumbing to exhaustion and illness – he was not yet 34 years old.[4] Lech's mother, Feliksa, born Kamienska,[5] has been credited with shaping her son's beliefs and tenacity.[6]

In 1961, Lech graduated from primary and vocational school in nearby Chalin and Lipno as a qualified electrician. He worked from 1961 to 1965 as a car mechanic, then embarked on his two-year obligatory stint of military service, attaining the rank of corporal, before beginning work at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk (Stocznia Gdańska im. Lenina), now called Gdańsk Shipyard (Stocznia Gdańska), as an electrician on 12 July 1967.[7]

From early on, Wałęsa was interested in workers' concerns; in 1968 he encouraged shipyard colleagues to boycott official rallies that condemned recent student strikes.[8] A charismatic leader,[10] he was an organizer of the illegal 1970 strikes at the Gdańsk Shipyard when workers protested the government's decree raising food prices; he was considered for chairman of the strike committee.[3][8] The strikes' outcome, involving over 30 workers' deaths, galvanized his views on the need for change.[8] In June 1976, Wałęsa lost his job at the Gdańsk Shipyards for his continued involvement in illegal unions, strikes and a campaign to commemorate the victims of the 1970 protests.[3][8][9] Afterwards, he worked as an electrician for several other companies, but was continually laid off for his activism and was jobless for long periods.[8] He and his family were under constant surveillance by the Polish secret police; his home and workplace were always bugged.[8] Over the next few years, he was arrested several times for participating in dissident activities.[3]

Wałęsa worked closely with the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR), a group that emerged to lend aid to individuals arrested after 1976 labor strikes and to their families.[3] In June 1978 he became an activist of the underground Free Trade Unions of the Coast (Wolne Związki Zawodowe Wybrzeża).[9] On 14 August 1980, after another food-price hike led to a strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk—a strike of which he was one of the instigators—Wałęsa scaled the shipyard fence and, once inside, quickly became one of the strike leaders.[3][8] The strike inspired some similar strikes, first at Gdańsk, then across Poland. Wałęsa headed the Inter-Plant Strike Committee, coordinating the workers at Gdańsk and at 20 other plants in the region.[3] On 31 August, the communist government, represented by Mieczysław Jagielski, signed an accord (the Gdańsk Agreement) with the Strike Coordinating Committee.[3] The agreement, besides granting the Lenin Shipyard workers the right to strike, permitted them to form their own independent trade union.[11] The Strike Coordinating Committee legalized itself as the National Coordinating Committee of the Solidarność (Solidarity) Free Trade Union, and Wałęsa was chosen chairman of the Committee.[3][9] The Solidarity trade union quickly grew, ultimately claiming over 10 million members—more than a quarter of Poland's population.[12] Wałęsa's role in the strike, in the negotiations, and in the newly formed independent trade union gained him fame on the international stage.[3][8] Wałęsa held his position until 13 December 1981, when General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law.[3] Wałęsa, like many other Solidarity leaders and activists, was arrested; he would be incarcerated for 11 months at several eastern towns (Chylice, Otwock, and Arłamów, near the Soviet border) until 14 November 1982.[8][9] On 8 October 1982, Solidarity was outlawed.[13] In 1983 Wałęsa applied to return to the Gdańsk Shipyard as a simple electrician.[8] That same year, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.[3] He was unable to accept it himself, fearing that Poland's government would not let him back into the country.[3][8] His wife Danuta accepted the prize on his behalf.[3][8]

Through the mid-1980s, Wałęsa continued underground Solidarity-related activities.[14] Every issue of the leading underground weekly, Tygodnik Mazowsze, bore his motto, "Solidarity will not be divided or destroyed."[15] Following a 1986 amnesty for Solidarity activists,[16] Wałęsa co-founded the first overt legal Solidarity entity since the declaration of martial law—the Provisional Council of NSZZ Solidarity (Tymczasowa Rada NSZZ Solidarność).[14] From 1987 to 1990, he organized and led the "semi-illegal" Provisional Executive Committee of the Solidarity Trade Union. In late summer 1988, he instigated work-stoppage strikes at the Gdańsk Shipyard.[14]

After months of strikes and political deliberations, at the conclusion of the 10th plenary session of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR, the Polish communist party), the government agreed to enter into Round Table Negotiations that lasted from February to April 1989.[3] Wałęsa was an informal leader of the "non-governmental" side in the negotiations.[9] During the talks, he traveled the length and breadth of Poland, giving speeches in support of the negotiations.[3] At the end of the talks, the government signed an agreement to re-establish the Solidarity Trade Union and to organize "semi-free" elections to the Polish parliament (semi-free since, in accordance with the Round Table Agreement, only members of the Communist Party and its allies could stand for 65% of the seats in the Sejm).[3][12][17][18]

In December 1988, Wałęsa co-founded the Solidarity Citizens' Committee.[9] Theoretically it was merely an advisory body, but in practice it was a kind of political party and won the parliamentary elections in June 1989 (Solidarity took all the seats in the Sejm that were subject to free elections, and all but one seat in the newly re-established Senate).[19] Wałęsa was one of Solidarity's most public figures; though he did not run for parliament himself, he was an active campaigner, appearing on many campaign posters.[3] In fact, Solidarity winners in the Sejm elections were referred to as "Wałęsa's team" or "Lech's team," as all those who won had appeared on their election posters together with him.[20][21]

While ostensibly only chairman of Solidarity, Wałęsa played a key role in practical politics. In August 1989, he persuaded leaders of former communist-allied parties to form a non-communist coalition government – the first non-Communist government in the Soviet Bloc. The parliament elected Tadeusz Mazowiecki as prime minister – the first non-communist Polish prime minister in over four decades.[12]

Wałęsa supported Poland's entry into NATO and into the European Union. Both these goals would be realized after his presidency, in 1999 and 2004, respectively.[8] In the early 1990s, Wałęsa proposed the creation of a NATO bis as a sub-regional security system. The concept, while supported by right-wing and populist movements in Poland, garnered little support abroad; Poland's neighbors, some of whom (e.g., Lithuania) had only recently regained independence, tended to see the proposal as Polish "neo-imperialism."[12][23]

Wałęsa has been criticized for a confrontational style and for instigating "war at the top," whereby former Solidarity allies clashed with one another, causing annual changes of government.[10][12][15][24][25] This increasingly isolated Wałęsa on the political scene.[26] As he lost more and more political allies, he came to be surrounded by people who were viewed by the public as incompetent and disreputable.[15][26]Mudslinging during election campaigns tarnished his reputation.[3][27] The ex-electrician with no higher education was thought by some to be too plain-spoken and too undignified for the post of president.[10][12][28] Others thought him too erratic in his views[12][25][29] or complained that he was too authoritarian – that he sought to strengthen his own power at the expense of the Sejm.[12][25][26][28]Jacek Merkel, Wałęsa's national security advisor, credited the shortcomings of Wałęsa's presidency to Wałęsa's inability to comprehend the office of the president as an institution. Walesa was an effective union leader capable of articulating what the workers felt but as president he had a difficult time delegating power or navigating the bureaucracy.[30][clarification needed] Finally, Wałęsa's problems were compounded by the difficult transition to a market economy; while in the long run it was seen as highly successful, it lost Wałęsa's government much popular support.[25][26][31]

Wałęsa's BBWR performed poorly in the 1993 parliamentary elections; at times his popular support dwindled to some 10%, and he narrowly lost the 1995 presidential election, gathering 48.72% of the vote in the run-off against Aleksander Kwaśniewski, who represented the resurgent Polish post-Communists (the Democratic Left Alliance, SLD).[3][12][26] Wałęsa's fate was sealed by his poor handling of the media; in the televised debates, he came over as incoherent and rude; at the end of the first of the two debates, in response to Kwaśniewski's extended hand, he replied that the post-Communist leader could "shake his leg".[26] After the election, Wałęsa said he was going to go into "political retirement", and his role in politics became increasingly marginal.[24][32][33]

In 2009 Wałęsa condemned the Obama administration's abandonment of a long range missile defense agreement with Poland.[43] In 2011 he wrote an article claiming that only communism is a viable temporary solution for the poor African countries in the 21st century.[44] He also voiced support of the Occupy Wall Street movement.[45] Wałęsa endorsed Mitt Romney during the 2012 US presidential campaign, stressing the importance of the US restoring its leadership role.[46]

Over the years, Wałęsa has been accused of having been an informant for the Polish secret police Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB) in the early 1970s, codenamed "Bolek". Although this was long before Wałęsa emerged as a hero of the Solidarity, questions remain whether it had an effect on his later decisions; for example, making him a probable target of blackmail. On 11 August 2000, the Warsaw Appellate Court, V Wydział Lustracyjny, declared that Wałęsa's lustration statement was true – that he had not collaborated with the communist regime.[47] Nonetheless, periodically the question resurfaces.

A 2008 book by historians from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Sławomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk, presenting new evidence, received substantial coverage in the media, provoked a hot nation-wide debate, and was noted by the international press.[48][49][50][51] The book is seen by some as very controversial; however, it contains over 130 pages of documents from archives of the secret police (which were inherited by the IPN) to support its claims, and Cenckiewicz defended his discoveries on a factual basis.[52]Janusz Kurtyka, president of the Institute of National Remembrance at the time, staunchly affirmed the thesis of the book while admitting that it does not contain a "hundred-percent" proof that Wałęsa was the agent Bolek, as some of the documents went missing during Wałęsa's presidency of Poland (1990–1995). He expressed hope the book would be subject to a wider debate.[53]

In his autobiography A Way of Hope, Wałęsa admitted that he did not come out clean from his interrogations in the aftermath of the December 1970 strikes and in subsequent conversations admitted that he and his family were threatened by security agents.[54] At times he has said that he tried to outwit his interrogators, although historians have observed it would have been an impossible self-delusion with more than a hundred agents assigned to dissident leaders. He has denied having been "Bolek"; or that he collaborated with the secret police, which seems to be the case after 1978 when he became a member of the Coastal WZZ [Free Trade Union].[55] His most dramatic refusal to cooperate with the regime came shortly after the introduction of martial law when he rejected the offer to head regime controlled Solidarity, which would have been a major blow to the popular dissident movement.[56]

Others have noted that the Polish secret police commonly falsified their own top secret reports (known as fałszywka in Polish) in order to ruin the good name of prominent individuals.[29][57] In November 2009 Wałęsa sued the then president of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, over his having repeated the collaboration allegations.[58]

On 15 April 2010, during a civil trial brought by Wałęsa against former fellow activist Krzysztof Wyszkowski over the collaboration allegations, a retired MO and Służba Bezpieczeństwa officer appeared in court and confirmed the fact of Wałęsa's collaboration in a sworn testimony.[59] The officer, Janusz Stachowiak, was in charge of keeping documentation on Wałęsa from December 1970 to 1974, although never met him in person. He stated that Wałęsa was convinced to cooperate by SB Capt. Henryk Rapczyński and SB Capt. Edward Graczyk, after a two-hour interrogation, albeit without the use of threats, and signed an agreement to keep his cooperation with SB in secret.[60] The officers asked him to "calm down" the atmosphere in the shipyard after protests were bloodily suppressed. Wałęsa kept meeting regularly with the secret police, reportedly receiving substantial sums of money,[60] but after about four months he started to "withdraw" (although it was not until June 1976 when he was unregistered, because of his "reluctance to cooperate").

Previously, in 2008, Capt. Edward Graczyk (long thought to be deceased and as such not summoned to testify in the 2000 trial) was interrogated by the IPN about his contacts with Wałęsa[61] and subsequently interviewed by Gazeta Wyborcza.[62] In the interview, which somewhat contradicts his earlier testimony, Graczyk recounted Wałęsa's cooperation, but denied his own actions had been "recruitment" of an agent. He also denied giving money to Wałęsa. The other of the two officers, Capt. Henryk Rapczyński, was never interrogated.

On 22 December 2011, it was reported that the prosecutor Zbigniew Kulikowski from the Białystok division of the IPN (National Remembrance Institute) determined that the SB (communist secret security) had forged documents in the 1980s that suggested Wałęsa was their agent during the 1980s.[63] Perhaps the most controversial act was the wanton destruction of government files, which occurred during the Wałęsa presidency, which some have argued have contributed to legal distortions and derailing of lustration in free Poland.[64]

Wałęsa is a devout Roman Catholic.[12] He is a staunch opponent of abortion, and has said that he would rather have resigned the presidency twenty times than sign into law a bill permitting abortion in Poland.[65] In an interview for Polish television in 2012, Wałęsa said that, as a Catholic, he opposes in vitro fertilization and same-sex marriage. At a political campaign rally in 2000 he said regarding gay people, "I believe those people need medical treatment", continuing with "Imagine if all people were like that. We wouldn't have any descendants."[66] As part of the same interview in 2012, he said that if his son were a homosexual he would pray for him to "step down from the wrong way".[67]

Wałęsa has also said that he is interested in information technology and likes to use new developments in that field. He has stated that he has assembled several computers to find out how they work and takes a smartphone, a palmtop, and a laptop with him when traveling.[68] Early in 2006 he revealed that he is a registered user of the Polish instant-messaging serviceGadu-Gadu, and was granted a new special user number – 1980 (A reference to the year Wałęsa cofounded Solidarity).[69] Later that year, he also said that he used Skype, his "handle" being lwprezydent2006.[70]

A month later, in June 2004, Wałęsa represented Poland at the state funeral of Ronald Reagan.[79] On 11 October 2006, Wałęsa was keynote speaker at the launch of "International Human Solidarity Day," proclaimed in 2005 by the United Nations General Assembly.[80] In January 2007 Wałęsa spoke at a Taiwan event, "Towards a Global Forum on New Democracies," in support of peace and democracy, along with other prominent world leaders and Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian.[81]

On 25 April 2007, Wałęsa represented the Polish government at the funeral of Boris Yeltsin, former President of the Russian Federation.[82] On 23 October 2009, he spoke at a conference in Gdańsk of presidents of all European senates, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the first free parliamentary elections in a former communist country – the 1989 elections to the Polish Senate.

Wałęsa has written three books: Droga nadziei (The Road of Hope, 1987), Droga do wolności (The Road to Freedom, 1991), and Wszystko, co robię, robię dla Polski (All That I Do, I Do for Poland, 1995).[14]

In the 1990s two satirical Polish songs, "Nie wierzcie elektrykom" ("Don't Trust Electricians") by Big Cyc, and "Wałęsa, gdzie moje 100 000 000" ("Wałęsa, Where's My 100,000,000 [złotych]?") by Kazik Staszewski, were major hits in Poland, and another song about Wałęsa was composed in 2009 by Holy Smoke.[88] He also inspired U2's song "New Year's Day" on their War album.[89] Coincidentally the Polish authorities lifted martial law on 1 January 1983, the very day that this single came out.[90] Patrick Dailly's Solidarity, starring Kristen Brown as Wałęsa, was premiered by the San Francisco Cabaret Opera in Berkeley and Oakland, California, in September and October 2009.[91]

Wałęsa, Lech (1992). The Struggle and the Triumph: An Autobiography. with the collaboration of Arkadius Rybicki, translated by Franklin Philip, in collaboration with Helen Mahut. New York: Arcade Publishers. ISBN1-55970-221-4.